


Posh Boy

by panickedbee



Series: Those Who Vow [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: John has this kink, Kinks, M/M, Pining, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Frustration, but they happened, it's one of those where i have no idea how they happened, the posh boy kink, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 03:16:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10453719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panickedbee/pseuds/panickedbee
Summary: In his head he greets him withhey, handsomein the morning, calls himgeniuswhen he is being too clever again, calls himpretty manandsilly gitandsweetheartand, of course,posh boy.[Remember that funny scene (that broke all of our hearts) where we find out that John calls Sherlock 'posh boy' in his head? Because I do.]





	1. i: the posh boy problem

_Posh boy left his mug on the papers again. It will leave a rim on the sports section._

John goes over to the living room table. Then he stops in his tracks. It’s happened again, hasn’t it? More and more often he finds himself giving Sherlock silly petnames in his head. He was never a friend of those, can hardly explain why he is doing it now – _in his own thoughts_ – but something about it calms and provokes him at the same time. He picks up the half-emptied mug of cold tea and thinks this over on his walk to the kitchen sink.

He likes Sherlock. He knows this, has known this for literally ages. That he likes him, and that he likes him in a way that Sherlock most definitely won’t find appealing. _Sexually_. There, he said it. In his head, of course, never out loud. But Sherlock, with his many frustrating qualities, of which many are outrageously attractive to John, is practically forcing him to feel provoked. Those feelings then lead to … petnames, apparently. He’s had stranger coping mechanisms before.

In his head he greets him with _hey, handsome_ in the morning, those wonderful mornings where Sherlock has actually slept and still looks all soft and not quite awake. He calls him _genius_ when he is being too clever again and doesn’t notice, calls him _pretty man_ and _silly git_ and _sweetheart_ when he’s feeling like it, and, of course, _posh boy_. He doesn’t even know what it is about that one in particular, but he finds that to be the worst. For his sexual frustration, that is. Every time it comes up in his head, which is more and more often, it fuels his imagination vividly. So much that it has even made it to his bedroom and he has dreams, half-asleep, half-awake, about teaching posh boy a lesson, getting posh boy a little dirty, treating posh boy a little rough. These are all terrible thoughts. Because they will stay just as imaginary and sexually frustrating. Posh boy won’t love him back, after all.

 

One morning Sherlock sits in front of his microscope on the kitchen table. He hasn’t moved for at least two hours. Nothing unusual. In fact, it is how they spend most of their Sundays now. John doesn’t really date anymore, and even if he did, he would not trade these days for anything. They have fallen into this pattern a while ago, the pattern of staying in on lazy Sundays, waking up later and waiting for the other to have breakfast together. Now Sherlock occupies himself with some experiment on maggots and fingers (John doesn’t even ask) and John is sitting in his chair. He is reading a novel about an incredibly clever and cunning explorer who kind of reminds him of Sherlock (he can’t help it, as much as he would like to). Being absorbed in the book, he is confused at first when Sherlock calls him from the kitchen.

“John?”

“Hmh?”

With Sherlock this is either going to be of highest importance or an absurdly unnecessary request.

“Care to pass me my phone?”

John sighs loudly. _The latter. Thought so_.

“Where is your phone?”

“Breast pocket.”

With his eyes rolling at the ceiling John puts a bookmark in his book, places it on the table next to him and gets off his chair. Walking into the kitchen, he murmurs under his breath.

“I see posh boy’s being a lazy butthead again…”

He takes the phone out of Sherlock’s breast pocket and holds it out for him. But instead of taking it and paying no more attention to him, Sherlock is suddenly staring at him like his face was on fire. John frowns at him. Sherlock, in turn, raises one brow.

“Posh?”

John’s eyes widen in shock and his heart jumps once in his chest and then stops, he thinks, just stops, and he wants to melt and become one with the floorboards. This is bad.

“I’m not posh,” Sherlock complains.

He must notice how John is only blushing more deeply. How? How did he say that out loud without noticing? How the bloody hell could he?

John clears his throat and decides to go along with it. There is no more turning back from here on anyway.

“You… are, actually. Just look at you, you with your… cheekbones. Your… perfectly tailored suits, your annoying British accent and deep voice-”

“We all have British accents.”

“I know!” John is enormously embarrassed, and he feels that if he doesn’t take a long walk right now, he will punch something to calm his inner unsettlement. “I need air.”

But Sherlock isn’t finished. “If anything, you are the posh one, John.”

“Hah! How so, Sherlock Holmes? Have you looked at yourself?”

“Have _you_ looked around this flat in the past years? There are piles of magazines in the corners of every room, there is a Cluedo board pinned to the wall by me, I leave my things wherever I please, the kitchen is a mess of syringes and human body parts – an organised and well structured mess if you know where to look, but not the point right now – and I am currently examining maggots. In contrast to this you, John Watson, are a doctor, you wear your chequered shirts buttoned up to your chin, you’ve lived a clean life not suffering from a drug addiction, have had girlfriends and relationships and altogether live as part of the middle-class society in Central London. You wish for a wife and children and probably a German Shepard and a house in the suburbs, or at least that’s what you think you want, so tell me, John: How am _I_ the posh one?”

John has a hard time finding a response to this that doesn’t only consist of loose vowels. It takes him a good minute, but Sherlock is oddly patient with him.

“First of all,” he manages then, “I don’t think I want a wife and children, thank you very much. And maybe… maybe I’m not that serious when I call you things like that.”

“So why do you?”

“What?” John’s heart is beating faster once more. He’s so tense.

“Why do you call me a posh… boy?”

Oh fuck, hearing those two words spoken out loud and together and out of _Sherlock’s mouth_ , for God’s sake!

“I- I don’t. Why- why should I even tell you? You read my mind all the time, can I not be allowed to keep this one thing to myself for once?!”

Sherlock narrows his eyes and observes him from head to toe. _Oh please no_. “No, that’s not it.”

“Alright, you know what? It’s you. Okay? It’s your fault! You just make me so angry all the time. No, don’t- don’t look at me like that.”

Sherlock’s eyes have gotten wide and very blue. He looks genuinely hurt by this. Scared even. Scared of what John would say next, what this would mean for them. John feels and shares his pain, and he hates himself for every word he has ever said that would make Sherlock look like this. He is vulnerable and human, after all. Even if he tries to convince everyone around him that he isn’t, John has to stop falling for Sherlock’s own defence mechanism.

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… what you said. There’s no wife and there is no house in the suburbs for me, Sherlock. I just can’t see it. But I see this.” He means Baker Street, means 221B, means … Sherlock. “This life. With you.”

Sherlock’s eyes are still so very blue. He wants to lose himself in them.

“And that makes you angry?” Sherlock asks.

“What? No. I’m just. Forget it.”

John finally has the courage to turn around and go, or maybe he lacks the courage to face him and stay, but either way he walks back into the sitting room, prepared to put on his jacket and leave the house for at least two hours. Sherlock jumps up and follows him.

“John! Wait. We never say what we want to say.”

John swirls around, his mouth a thin line of held back emotions. He stands close to the door. Ready to flee. “And what do you wanna say?”

Sherlock takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, there is courage in the one and fear in the other.

“Me too.”

“Sorry?”

“Me too. I see this, too. Us. This life we share.”

John bites the insides of his mouth because his whole skin feels hot with disbelief and wonder and hope, _oh god_ , so much hope that he doesn’t let himself own.

“What?” he asks instead, going for a weak smile, “You don’t see yourself with a wife and children?”

Sherlock huffs a laugh. “No. Weirdly I don’t.”

They smile at each other.

“So ‘posh boy’,” Sherlock says after a while, “is actually about…?”

“Me being an ungrateful moron? Me never saying what I should say before it’s too late? Me trying to get my anger at all of this under control? Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.”

Sherlock looks down at the spot between his feet. He’s thinking. But not as he usually is, not fast and calculating and mechanical. He’s thinking about the right thing to do. The things he has always wanted to do, but never thought it to be right or appropriate or _good_ for them.

“I can wait for you to figure this out.”

“Wait for me?”

“As long as you need, John. We both agreed, didn’t we? Both of us don’t plan on leaving or getting married and reproduce anytime soon, so.”

“You don’t like waiting,” John points out, but he is already incredibly relieved and impressed by Sherlock’s words.

“No, I don’t. But I like you.”

John doesn’t flee to take an hour-long walk that day. He would never trade a lazy Sunday with Sherlock Holmes, after all. Sherlock continues with his experiment, and John reads. Later they watch telly together and Sherlock yells at the incompetent game show host on BBC One. He said he could wait till John figures this out, whatever this is. But maybe they both don’t have to wait that long. Maybe, just maybe, posh boy could actually love him back.


	2. ii: the posh boy solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is waiting in this charged air of silence, maybe having realised what he just said, maybe not. Sherlock tips his chin up and obeys.
> 
> "I'm not so posh anymore now, am I?"

Sometimes John calls Sherlock little secret names in his head. Greets him with _hey, handsome_ in the morning, calls him _genius_ when he’s being too clever, calls him _pretty man_ , _silly git_ , _sweetheart_. But sometimes he just needs to call him,

“You fucking idiot!”

John throws his jacket at the back of his chair in obvious distress. It falls off immediately. He is clearly angry with him, Sherlock has observed the ragged breath and flaring nostrils long ago and drawn his conclusions. He wonders what exactly he’s done wrong to upset him so much. The fact that he (technically not quite) stole a boat or that he managed to fall into the Thames? He himself is just upset about having been forced to sacrifice his woollen coat in order to save himself from drowning. Of course, he owns lots of coats. You never know when an accidence like this one might occur.

While Sherlock swam to the shore, John made sure the jewellery thieves, due to which that boat chase had originally been initiated, did not shoot at Sherlock, and in the process of that received a pretty hard blow to the head. A bump is already growing just next to the vein that always pulsates visibly when John is angry.

“You should cool that,” Sherlock suggests.

“Shut up! I will cool that when I feel like cooling it, I’m a bloody doctor!”

Sherlock swallows. It’s worse than he thought. He cannot deny that he likes John when he is on the right side of angry, but this is probably the wrong side and he is also being yelled at.

“A boat chase, Sherlock?!”

“In my defence-” Sherlock starts, but is interrupted by John raising a finger, ordering him to shut the hell up.

“Take your clothes off.”

Sherlock stares. Sherlock blinks. His mind stays blank for a worryingly long amount of time. Then he remembers. He’s wet. Soaked, in fact, completely down to his bones, and freezing too. It’s taken him a little long to catch up because these words, words spoken in the tone of an army captain, are something he’s last heard two days ago, half asleep and desperate in his own bedroom. Another one of those nights in which his imagination filled in for the needs that reality doesn’t meet.

John is waiting in this charged air of silence, maybe having realised what he just said, maybe not. Sherlock tips his chin up and obeys.

“I’m not so posh anymore now, am I?” he mutters under his breath.

John presses his lips together at this, and Sherlock worries briefly that the vein at his temple might just burst. His eyes withhold a certain kind of spark, like a candle flickering, like the glare of a predator. All of a sudden, Sherlock feels stripped completely naked by those eyes only. Then he comes to realise … He’s stripping down. The ruined jacket abandoned next to his shoes and socks, his shirt hanging open to expose his chest and stomach, and his trousers… he’s in the process of shoving them down his thighs. The process of stripping down to his underwear for John Watson. But he feels naked.

John is walking towards him. Slowly, like he means to break him. He might.

His eyes are boring into Sherlock’s own and electrify the space between them, the air they breathe. Sherlock swallows, once more, but his throat is dry and he is thirsty. He is cold, goosebumps all over his body from the river water and those ocean eyes, but his skin is hot with anticipation.

John steps right into his space. Sherlock can smell him. It does things to him, awful things to his heightened senses. It clouds them, but at the same time he is overly aware of naked skin and of John wearing way too many clothes.

“Yeah,” John whispers roughly, so rough and so low he could hurt himself on that sandpaper voice. “You’re still a fucking posh boy.”

John’s eyes drop, and his breath is ragged, but Sherlock suspects this time it’s for entirely different reasons than anger. He doesn’t know who gives in first, and frankly, he  doesn’t give one fuck about it because the next thing he knows is that John’s lips are on his and it feels like he’s dying and being reborn in one single breath.

They long for each other, and their lips meet so hard it might leave bruises. John is all-consuming, is groaning and opening his mouth by opening his own first. Sherlock’s knees buckle at the sensation that is John’s tongue running over his bottom lip. If this is what it’s like to kiss John Watson, he should be put in chains because it’s dangerous. He walks him backwards, shoves him into the wall next to the kitchen. Sherlock’s trousers have dropped down to his ankles and he almost falls over them, held upright by the hard surface of the wall where he bumps his head into.

Dizzy and with a sharp pain buzzing through the back of his head, he feels weightless when John lifts one of his legs, slowly running his hand over the underside of his thigh, fingers through thin hairs and over hard muscle, and Sherlock’s natural reaction is to wrap his leg around John’s middle and hold on tight, so tight. His trousers are hanging from the end of his foot like one last resort before they fall off and to the floor. The pain wears off, and suddenly Sherlock thinks he can feel _everything_.

The smooth fabric of John’s shirt and the rough one of his jeans that presses against the lower part of his body. Against his thighs and hipbones and the growing bulge in his pants. John’s one hand is rubbing back and forth over his inner thigh and the soft spot where it dissolves into firm buttocks. A soft spot that draws a quite whine out of the back of his throat. He places his other hand on his face to hold him. Lifting his jaw ever so slightly, his thumb is stroking over one sharp cheekbone, and he kisses him again.

Sherlock still feels like he is dying, but it’s different than it was before. John deepens the kiss, and he feels utterly devoured. He’s never wanted anything more, he thinks. Wrapped up in all of him. It fuels his addictive personality in many dangerous ways, but he cannot think, can only indulge in this dance of drawing back only to lean back in again, tongues against each other in one hot wet mess.

All the blood is running south, and as he wraps his arms around John’s neck, he isn’t quite sure how to feel, much less what he is doing.

John breaks the kiss with a sigh. A long, dreamy sigh Sherlock has trouble interpreting correctly. Is it regret? Relief? Pity? But as he closes his eyes in silence, he brings their foreheads together and leans against him. They stay like this for what seems like minutes over minutes, and it should be uncomfortable, should feel ridiculous - with one of them undressed and the two of them panting against each other - but it doesn’t. They breathe together in unison, and when John draws back to look at him, his eyes don’t show anger, aren’t predatory. They are warm, they are gentle.

“You have no idea how long…” he begins, but doesn’t quite know where he was going with it, or if he wants this sentence to end.

Sherlock’s response gets stuck in his throat and its remains come out in a sob. “Yes,” he manages.

“And all this time,” John continues, “So much time…”

“It’s okay,” Sherlock assures him. His voice is quiet, as if he was afraid of breaking emotions fragile and clear as glass. And when they aren’t clear as glass, they are a thick fog of all the things left unsaid. It’s very hard to see through it, but what he sees is sharp enough. “We’re here now.”

John leans back in. He takes his time now, is gentle in his touches and caresses his cheeks. They feel wet, somehow, but Sherlock doesn’t understand why. It’s like the tears are falling naturally.

“Bedroom,” John whispers.

How many times has he imagined John Watson in his bed before this? He hasn’t kept track, but he knows that this time couldn’t be further from his imagination. Because it is reality. And it feels so, so much better than anything else in the world.

John doesn’t hold anything back with him. He kisses him in every spot, he bites his lip and neck and, _oh god_ , the sensitive skin up, up his thighs. He whispers names into all of those spots, lets them sink into his flesh and travel to his chest where they can burn and glow and melt his insecurities with flickers of bliss.

He calls him _love_ when he breaks a kiss, calls him _honey_ as he buries his face in the crook of his neck, calls him _genius_ when Sherlock touches him in the most intimate of places. He tells him he is _gorgeous_ , tells him _I need you_ and _I want you_. It’s the hottest thing in Sherlock’s ears, goes straight between his legs. He asks him, _Is this okay?_ , asks almost desperately _how, how can I have you?_

He calls him _you brilliant man_ when he groans, _you pretty, pretty boy_. But as he thrusts, harder, _yes harder_ , sinks his teeth into his flesh and moans, as his movements became frantic and they are so close and wrapped in each other with tangled limbs and desperation, and _ye_ s, as he comes, the one thing on his lips is _Sherlock_. Only Sherlock. As beautiful as he has ever heard his own name sound. He’s had no idea his name could sound like this, and he’s not sure how anything else could ever come close to being this good.

They lie together, cuddling and blissed out and fucking happy for the first time in what seems to have taken ages. Sherlock feels a smile stretching across his face. John’s thumb caresses long laugh lines as he is bent over him. But he isn’t smiling back. He looks like something worries him.

“Don’t ever risk your own life like that again,” he warns him, but warns him softly.

Sherlock thinks about it in the most rational way he can. He is very serious when he says, “If risking my life leads to this right here, to you and me, I might just consider it.”

John goes ahead and bites him. Just below his jawline, as he has very recently learned he likes a lot.

Sherlock gasps and John lets go.

“Oh no,” he whispers. “This wasn’t a reward, Sherlock. It was… long overdue. I’m still mad at you.”

Sherlock looks away in honest concern and fear. “Are you really?”

John sighs. “No.”

They cuddle in silence for a long while. Sherlock is very close to falling asleep. He is much closer to losing himself to whatever he feels for John Watson. He knows it is love. He’s not sure how much more it is, but it might just kill him one day. That might just be fine with him.

“You’re my posh boy now,” John murmurs right before he feels himself drift away.

He smiles, honestly. Wholeheartedly.

“I’ve never been anything else, John.”


End file.
